Reclaiming History (202 page)

The final point I want to discuss concerns the many Dealey Plaza spectators and members of Dallas law enforcement who ran to the grassy knoll area after the shooting. It is accepted wisdom in the conspiracy community that they did so because they all thought the fatal shot had “come from the top of the grassy knoll.”
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But while this may have been the reason why some ran there, it certainly wasn’t the reason why others, perhaps most, did. I say this because those who maintain people ran to the knoll because they thought the shot or shots came from there almost always add that the people did so to “pursue the assassin.”
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But if one stops to think about it, where else but the parking lot area behind the top of the knoll
could
people possibly run if they wanted to “pursue the assassin”? No one has ever claimed that any of the shots came from the south side of Elm Street, most likely because everyone knows that the south side of Elm is literally out in the open and wouldn’t provide the assassin any cover from detection. For the very same reason, no assassin would run
to
the south side of Elm, where there would be nothing to shield him from view. So that only leaves the north side of Elm (no one ran down Elm or up Elm in pursuit of any possible assassin). And on the north side of Elm, though many people ran toward the Book Depository Building, it wasn’t to “pursue the assassin,” but simply because they thought the shots came from the building. How would the spectators pursue the assassin inside the building? Moreover, any assassin in the building would have to leave it in order to escape. That only leaves one other possible area where a Dealey Plaza spectator might think, at least on the spur of the moment, an assassin would conceivably fire from—the grassy knoll and pergola area, with its walls and heavy foliage. And if a spectator made that assumption, he would know that the parking lot area behind the knoll and pergola would be the only area the escaping assassin could run through. Hence, the natural and intuitive place for many of the police and spectators to run toward to pursue or see a fleeing assassin would be the railroad yard area behind the knoll and pergola.

Is there any evidence, apart from logic, to support the above? Yes. Among others, Dallas deputy sheriff Luke Mooney said, “We…ran over into Dealey Plaza, crossed Elm, jumped over the wall of the embankment on what’s now called the grassy knoll and headed toward the railroad yards. At that time, it seemed to have been the most logical place to begin looking unless you had actually known from where the shots originated, which I didn’t.”
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Dallas police officer David V. Harkness said, “I…started searching behind the railroad yards,
not because I thought shots had come from there
, but because we were looking for…somebody running, trying to get away.”
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And Dallas U.S. postal inspector Harry D. Holmes, who was watching the motorcade with his binoculars from one of the windows in his office in the Terminal Annex Building at the southwest corner of Main and Houston streets, said that after the shooting, he kept using his binoculars “to see if anybody left the area, especially the parking area and the railroad tracks where a guy would likely try to escape.”
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One Dealey Plaza witness, Charles Brehm, goes a step further, believing there was no valid reason for people to run up the knoll. “They were running up to the top of that hill, it seemed to me, in almost
sheep-like fashion following somebody running up those steps
. There was a policeman who ran up those steps also. Apparently people thought that he was chasing something, which he certainly wasn’t. There were no shots from that area, but
some of the people followed him
anyway.”
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Another Dealey Plaza witness, Bill Newman, essentially supports Brehm’s conclusion. He says, “I don’t know why they were running up that way. Maybe the Secret Service men, or whoever,
initiated
it, but I just think it was more or less a
crowd reaction
. I doubt if the people saw or heard anything up there.”
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The above is not to suggest that there were very few witnesses who believed one or more shots came from the grassy knoll. Quite a few did. For instance, it couldn’t have taken Dallas police motorcyclist Clyde A. Haygood too much time after he heard the shots to get from where he was at Main and Houston to halfway down Elm Street, where the president was shot, yet when he got there, some people were already “pointing back up to the railroad yard,” which is where he searched.
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But if Mooney, Harkness, Holmes, Brehm, and Newman are correct, and knowing how our subconscious minds influence our conscious words and deeds, one wonders how many Dealey Plaza witnesses who testified or gave statements that they thought the shots came from the grassy knoll said this not because they thought so
at the time of the shots
, but because they clearly remember running up to that area after the shooting, and that reality, over time, convinced them they heard shots coming from there.

W
ith respect to shots allegedly coming from the grassy knoll, where, specifically, on the knoll do the conspiracy theorists claim the triggerman was? The consensus among theorists, including the HSCA, is that he was standing behind the stockade fence at a point about eight feet to the west of the southeastern corner of the fence (see photo section).
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The HSCA determined the location through the mathematical computations of its acoustic experts. A celebrated Polaroid photo taken by Dealey Plaza spectator Mary Moorman at the time of the shot to the president’s head includes this spot as well as other locations in the knoll area that conspiracy theorists have claimed was the location of the second gunman. Many conspiracy theorists are convinced they see the human figures of assassins in several places amidst the heavy foliage on the knoll shown in the Moorman photo.
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The photographic evidence panel of the HSCA examined the Moorman photo and said, “It was not possible to determine the nature of the images [in the photo] with the naked eye…Enhancement attempts in the region of the retaining wall produced no significant increase in detail and no evidence of any human form. Because the stockade fence region of the photograph was of even poorer quality than the retaining wall area, no enhancement attempts were recommended.”
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The HSCA went on to say, somewhat sheepishly, that if the photo “did not contain images that might be construed to be a figure behind the fence, it would be a troubling lack of corroboration for the acoustical analysis” (subsequently discredited), which alleged a fourth bullet was fired from this general area of the grassy knoll.
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Suffice it to say that anyone who can actually see human figures at the aforementioned encircled points in the Moorman photograph, or anywhere else in the background of the photo, should be thoughtful enough to bequeath his or her eyes to the scientific and medical communities for study and analysis.

It is important to note that the HSCA photographic panel examined several other photos that conspiracy theorists have maintained, throughout the years, show the outline and existence of a gunman on the grassy knoll or in the retaining wall area on the north side of Elm Street. Its conclusion was that “we find
no
[photographic]
evidence
[emphasis by panel] to support the contention that there were [other] gunmen in the Dealey Plaza area…We believe that the best available science and technology in photography and computer manipulation of images was utilized in preparing the evidence that led to the above conclusion.”
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L
et’s briefly set forth the points that not only conclusively prove that the shots did not come from the grassy knoll, but also show that if conspirators had indeed set out to murder the president, selecting the grassy knoll as the place where they would position their triggerman would make absolutely no sense at all. I want to emphasize that
most
of these points, all by themselves and independently of the others,
alone
demonstrate the obvious invalidity and absurdity of the conspiracy theorists’ grassy knoll argument.

During the discussion of these points the reader should remember that the three cartridge cases, which we know were ejected from Oswald’s rifle, were found on the floor beneath the southeasternmost window on the sixth floor of the Book Depository Building shortly after the shooting. Indeed, without even knowing who Lee Harvey Oswald was, without even having heard his name or knowing he existed and worked at the Book Depository Building, within minutes of the shooting in Dealey Plaza law enforcement primarily focused not on the grassy knoll, but on the Book Depository Building, specifically the sixth floor.

1. Although the conspiracy theorists have written countless words about the grassy knoll and presented all manner of theories, at the end of the day, as the expression goes, the cold hard fact remains that
no witness saw any human, with or without a rifle, standing behind the picket fence on the grassy knoll at the time the president’s limousine proceeded down Elm Street, and although many people, ran to the knoll after the shooting to investigate, they didn’t see anyone, with or without a rifle, running or even walking away from behind the picket fence after the shots rang out
. Certainly, no reasonable person would say that people like Virgil Hoffman and Jean Hill, who said for the first time, fifteen to twenty years after the assassination, they saw someone with a rifle behind the fence (and even then in complete contradiction with their earlier statements that they saw nothing), should be considered as refuting this assertion.

Lee Bowers, the Union Terminal Railroad switchman who was up inside the north tower 120 yards or so behind the picket fence at the time of the shooting, was looking “directly towards” the picket fence area as he watched the motorcade go by. He had a view of the entire rail yard area behind the fence,
*
the only route of escape for an assassin behind the fence
, and he saw no one running or even walking away from behind the fence after the shooting, much less someone holding a rifle or any other type of weapon.
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Right after the shooting, Dallas County deputy sheriff Eugene Boone ran behind the picket fence into the parking lot in the railroad yards, and he told the Warren Commission that he “searched the freight yards” behind the fence and was “unable to find anything.” He also said he asked a man “up in the tower [obviously, Bowers]…if he had seen anybody running out there in the freight yards” and the man said he “hadn’t seen anybody racing around out there in the yard.”
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At the London trial, after Boone repeated all of this, I asked him to elaborate on the search behind the picket fence. He said there were flower beds behind the fence and the soil had recently been turned over. He said he checked the entire area for footprints because someone firing from behind the picket fence “would have had to stand in the flower bed,” but he found “no footprints” at all.
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Neither did he find “any powder burns or anything like that on any of the foliage” near there.
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Additionally, although the many people standing on the railroad overpass above Elm, Main, and Commerce streets would not have been able to see directly behind the picket fence on the grassy knoll (since the overpass is at approximately the same height as the fence), they would have had a clear view of anyone running away from behind the fence into the parking lot and railroad yards to the rear, and there’s no evidence they saw anyone. Austin Miller, one of the people on the railroad overpass, said that after the shots “I stepped back [since, as indicated, he was at the same level as the fence] and looked on the tracks to see if anybody [was running] across the railroad tracks, and there was nobody running across the railroad tracks.”
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S. M. Holland, who was also standing on top of the railroad overpass and thought a shot may have come from the grassy knoll, told the Warren Commission that “immediately” after the shots were fired, he ran to his left off the overpass “to see if I could see anyone up there behind the [picket] fence,” but he saw no one.
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Holland said that he and several policemen and plainclothesmen “looked for empty shells around there for quite awhile,” but found none.
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As already indicated, the gunman would have had to flee through the railroad parking lot and over the tracks and would have easily been observed and noticed by many people. Yet no one saw such a figure. Indeed, Dallas deputy sheriff W. W. “Bo” Mabra said that right after the shots he went to the rail yards and parking area “behind the knoll behind a wooden fence” and “helped search this area.” He said that while in the area behind the picket fence, “I talked to a [uniformed Dallas police] officer who said ‘I was stationed in the rail yards and had this entire area in view. Nobody came this way.’” In an interview later, Mabra said the officer added, “There hasn’t been a thing move back here in a hour or more because I’ve been here all that time.”
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True, there were some cars in the parking lot, but Dallas police officer Joe Smith said, “I checked all the cars. I looked into all the cars.”
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In fact, behind the picket fence on the grassy knoll would have been such a bad location for any assassin to have placed himself that when Warren Commission counsel asked Dallas deputy sheriff Buddy Walthers (who was standing in front of the sheriff’s office on Main Street at the time of the shooting) if he thought of it as the source of the shots, Walthers said, “No, it never even entered my mind…Knowing how this thing is arranged, and I have chased a couple of escapees across the thing before, and knowing what was over there, the thought that anyone was shooting from [there]—I’ve heard some people say he was behind the fence, and I’m telling you, it just can’t be, because it’s a wide open…area as far as you can go…The thought that anyone would be shooting off of there would almost be an impossible thing. There’s no place for him to go. There’s nothing.”
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